Maurizio Seracini will head a new interdisciplinary center at UC
San Diego.
He has X-rayed hundreds of Renaissance masterpieces, including
works by Leonardo Da Vinci. He has used just about every other
ray in the spectrum to study more than 2,500 of the world’s
most important paintings, frescoes, statues and monuments. His
work got him mentioned in The Da Vinci Code. Now he is going to
head a ground-breaking center at UC San Diego.
The University has announced that Maurizio Seracini, ’73,
will head the campus’ new Center of Interdisciplinary Science
for Art, Architecture and Archaeology. The center, also known as
CISA3, is billed as the first institution devoted to using and
developing advanced technologies to understand and conserve works
of art, monumental buildings and archaeological sites.
“Science can bring so much to our
understanding and our appreciation of art,” says Seracini, “and
we are creating a new discipline where art and engineering go hand-in-hand.”
The center will develop new technologies to peer beyond the surface
of works of art, Seracini told a February 28 press conference
at UCSD. Researchers also will use current technologies to scan
and
analyze paintings, sculptures and buildings and help decide how
to best handle and restore them. Ultimately, the goal is to create
a new kind of scientist—an engineer of cultural heritage,
with a strong background in the arts and humanities
as well as in engineering and science. Seracini could definitely
serve as the
prototype. Two years ago, he shocked the art history world with
his spectacular
revelation of hitherto unknown Da Vinci drawings, hidden beneath
the dull brown surface of the Adoration of the Magi. (For more on this and his work see
our feature in the January 2006 issue
of @UCSD at http://alumni.ucsd.edu/
magazine/vol3no1.)
Joining him at CISA3 are 17 investigators, whose specialties
range from engineering to archeology. The new center is part
of the California
Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2)
and is a collaboration between UCSD’s Division of Arts and
Humanities and the Jacobs School of Engineering. CISA3 has reached an agreement to create digital clinical charts
for major works in the San Diego Museum of Art’s collection
and the museum will now be the first in the world to have such
charts, as a baseline for future restoration efforts. “We’re
adding knowledge,” Seracini says. “We’re really
pushing forward in that direction.” The center’s teams already have started to work. In January,
Seracini and colleagues put Da Vinci’s “The Annunciation” through
a thorough examination in Florence. Next on the list is Florence’s
Palazzo Medici, or Medici Palace (pictured above). The President
of the Province of Florence, Matteo Renzi, was present at the news
conference where he signed an historic agreement with UCSD officials,
giving researchers the green light to scan and analyze the Medici
building inch by inch. Scientists will look for hidden murals and
artifacts in the palace and chart changes in its structure over
the past 500 years. Renzi emphasized that the collaboration would
help fulfill Florence’s responsibility to care for its treasures. “Today,
we share not only a project, not only an idea,” he said at
the signing. “We must remember the past, but we must also
construct our future.” — Ioana Patringenaru
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